People Made of Smoke, Cities Made of Song
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: They're in the corridor, and Clara's dreaming. She can see planets whirling away, and the Doctor is a black hole, and she stands on his edge while the stars eat each other in his eyes. 12/Clara. Post 8x08.


**A/N: Written because Twelve/Clara has taken over my brain, and my heart, and my computer. Also, that corridor scene. Also also, title from a Seventh Doctor quote.**

* * *

** People Made of Smoke, Cities Made of Song**

They're in the corridor, and she's dreaming.

"Dinner," she says, and he smiles, patiently, as though she's a bit slow.

"Drinks first," he says. "I'm fast, but that doesn't mean I'm cheap."

* * *

They're in the corridor, and she's dreaming. There's music in the distance, and a vacant ceiling overhead, the kind that makes her want to paint some stars. He has a pencil in his hand, and he's reaching up to follow her whim. He's sketching, he's swooping and dipping with the lead.

"Van Gogh," she says, vaguely.

"I met him," says the Doctor, frowning at a line that does not do what he wants it to do.

"Who now?"

He looks down at her for a moment. "Vincent. Nice fellow. A bit odd." She wants to laugh. "We gave him sunflowers, and a momentary sense of optimism and hope."

"Momentary?"

"I can't control people, Clara," he says, aggrieved. She decides to leave that one alone. Even though this is a dream, she doesn't want to argue with him about when and where he decides to leave people to fend for themselves. They're never going to agree.

"What are you going to give me?"

He stops drawing again, though his hand stays up; his eyes flick down, and he murmurs, "Greedy." Then drops the pencil— she catches it— and splays his fingers against the drawn-on sky, and twists, and pushes, and the ceiling lifts away, and the starlight spills in gloriously. She can see planets whirling away, and the Doctor is a black hole, and she stands on his edge while the stars eat each other in his eyes.

* * *

They're in the corridor, and she's dreaming. There's danger in the distance, and the walls loom over them, and the blinds are down. Why are the blinds down? There are wonders waiting to be seen, just outside the windows. But that's too much like reality, too much like the memory, and she pushes it away from herself, and lets the blinds be up. They stand together at the plexiglass, and she leans forward to breathe on it, and writes her name with her fingertip while he watches.

"Do you want this to be the end?" he asks her quietly.

She purses her lips, and draws a little heart at the end of her name.

"Probably wouldn't keep dreaming about it if I did," she admits. To herself, to him, to anyone who's listening. She wonders if anyone is. She wonders where she is, and if he can see her. She wonders if she also is secretly made of plexiglass, and if he were to lean down and breathe on her, whose name he would write with his fingertip, on her breath-warmed heart.

* * *

They're in the corridor, and she's dreaming, and the words have stuttered to a standstill and stopped, and she is looking at the floor, and he is staring at her as though he has seen a vision. A man transfixed. Not a man, and more than a man, and no less than a man.

_Is it boring?_

_No._

But she can't promise him that, can she? She doesn't think it would be boring, she never found it boring before— till he came along. She doesn't know, she can't imagine, how it would be now. To go back to what it was like before. Mundane pursuits. Human things. She's drawn into the vision of him lounging on her sofa post-dinner, kicking his shoes off and objecting to her choice of programs on the telly.

"I don't know," she says, quite honestly. "I think it _could_ be interesting. It has all the possibilities."

"Clara," says the Doctor, a bit raggedly, and then interrupts himself, just as she thought he was going to argue— but he interrupts himself only to say, rapidly, several times, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no—" and then he interrupts himself again by losing whatever else he was about to say on her mouth, which surprises both of them, because Clara had given up on this being that sort of dream. It's over quickly, so maybe it isn't that sort of dream after all, hardly enough time for her to register that it's happening. But his mouth is warm, his lips are dry, and she thinks of ancient things, soul-stealers, taking something from her that is hers by rights, something she has held onto for so long and fought so hard to keep

She says, "Good night, Doctor," and he says, "Good night—" and doesn't finish, only enters his room and leaves her to stand on her own in the corridor. Which she does, stands there patiently and waits for the dream to end. But the dream doesn't end, only goes on aimlessly, misty and inconclusive, and she takes to staring at the dim lights and waiting for them to flicker and for something horrid to appear from the darkened corner of the train. But it doesn't. Nothing happens, and nothing continues to happen, and when at last the Doctor opens his door, already mid-sentence— "—and another thing—" she is so relieved at there being something to relieve her boredom that she turns immediately into him and winds her arms about his neck.

"It's okay," she says into his objection, into his open mouth, "we're dreaming."

"Are we?" says the Doctor. Clara presses against him harder, and she can feel his hands at her back, those long fine fingers spread and flat, and he lifts her almost absently.

"I'm pretty sure you'd never let me do this in real life," she says.

"Are you?" says the Doctor, faintly, and if she stretches herself she can reach the floor with her toes and push, so she walks him backwards into his stateroom, and she won't do anything else, dream or not, but she can't stop her subconscious, and she's sinking into him, and his mouth, and his hands—

* * *

They're in the corridor, and she's dreaming. And swearing. Dreaming and swearing.

"Language," says the Doctor, with a severity that she's quite sure is mock, and she presses her back against the wall and moves to stand against him, so they're front to front, so she can whisper to him if she wants to. She doesn't want to, but she might at some point.

"If you only knew what was just interrupted," she says, "you'd probably swear, too."

"It's alright," says the Doctor, and he lifts her champagne flute towards her with a finger on the bottom. "Just try again."

She regards him seriously over the rim of the glass. He waits politely until she has finished the champagne, then downs his own and sets the two flutes at their feet. He kisses her on his way back up, bent over her a bit awkwardly, his hands flat on the wall either side of her, and the taste of him is surprised, so she grasps at his narrow shoulders and makes herself familiar.

"It's alright," he says when he lets her go a bit, "we're dreaming."

* * *

They're in the corridor. It's anyone's guess, but given the fact that she would never have expected the Doctor to dance quite this well, she has the sneaking suspicion that she's dreaming. The sounds of the band drift ghostlike down the hall, so ethereal that she wonders if they're breathing them in.

One hand on her hip, the other hand with fingers wrapped loosely around hers. The corridor's too narrow to dance in properly, but that doesn't seem to be stopping them.

The Doctor seems to have got the hang of the sad smile, somehow.

"This is how I wanted to say goodbye," he says, softly.

Clara raises her eyebrows. "You _wanted_ to say good bye?"

"No I didn't," he denies immediately, as though how dare she suggest such a thing, and Clara smiles, not the sad kind.

"That's what I thought," she says.

* * *

They're on the beach, and she's awake. She's awake, and they have had this odd little conversation about being cold-hearted, and pretending, and things being easier, and she lays back against the pillow he's brought out for her and thinks, _No, never, not ever._

_Wouldn't it be easier if we liked the people we were supposed to like?_

It strikes her then that she's watching him watch her, and his is the bated breath, his is the double-time hearts, while his lips press together and thin and his eyebrow lifts, while he pours himself into looking at her as though he does not care. He's waiting for her to tell him, to tell him good bye. He'll let her choose how. He'll even make it easy for her, if she wants.

But they're sitting together on an alien beach, and the alien sun is in the sky, and she is the only human thing for lightyears around. Meanwhile, the cold-hearted alien has brought her out into the sunlight and covered her with a blanket, and given her his extra pillow, and let her sleep as long as she wanted, while he kept himself occupied by poking at the ground with a stick. She puts her arms around her doubled-up knees, and looks at his long fingers, his hands lying still for once in his lap, while he waits patiently for her.

She smiles.

She says, "Who cares about easy, anyway."

* * *

They're in the TARDIS, and someone's singing in an absent-minded way, the way you do when you're blindingly happy and you don't even quite know why.

It's probably her.


End file.
